International issues

Cairo, 23 April – Tens of thousands of protesters returned to Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a massive demonstration Friday [April 20] demanding that the ruling military generals immediately hand over power to a civilian government. The protesters also called for former regime members to be barred from running in next month’s presidential elections.

**By Leo Dobbs, Choucha Transit Centre, Tunisia (UNHCR)** – Mohammed Karem wants to become a roving art teacher for refugees around the world. “I would like to travel with UNHCR or any other organization,” he says.

A bomb attack on the offices of the national TV network Televisa in Matamoros in Tamaulipas state on 25 March has raised fears of a resumption of the threats that were aimed against the organization in the same place [in 2010](http://en.rsf.org/mexico-after-four-releases-tragic-july-03-08-2010,38086.html).

“I have the feeling that justice has finally been done after the offensive launched against me,” provincial TV journalist Teobaldo Meléndez Fachín told RWB yesterday, referring to an appeal court ruling 10 days ago overturning his November conviction on a charge of [“aggravated defamation”](http://en.rsf.org/peru-decriminalization-of-press-05-01-2012,41631.html).

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is warning that more than a million children below the age of five in the Sahel are facing a disaster amid the ongoing food crisis in the drought-prone region of Africa.

Washington DC – Compelling advice against a hasty, unilateral decision by Israel to “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran has come – from Israel. The advice is significant not only for what was said, but for who said it.

Reporters Without Borders denies reports that it was “excluded” from UNESCO during this UN body’s most recent executive council session for a supposed “lack of ethics.” False reports to this effect have been circulated by certain media, especially in Latin America, without any attempt at verification.

Bangkok – Japan is widely regarded as well-prepared for disasters, being used to frequent tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic activity, but a year after the calamitous events of 11 March 2011, the lessons from the multi-disaster still resonate.

Reporters Without Borders is deeply saddened by the news that radio journalist Jean Liphète Nelson was gunned down yesterday in Cité Soleil, the poorest neighbourhood of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Reporters Without Borders is deeply shocked by the raids that Israeli troops carried out on two Palestinian TV stations in the West Bank in the early hours of 29 February, seizing equipment and thereby forcing the stations to close.